More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education.
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This book project is designed with the help of recommended trade books and books I have research myself for my students to find meaning and connections to the concepts that they are learning for English Language Arts which unfortunately our new curriculum does not provide.
My students struggle to understand and make connections with generic and boring literature. They do not connect to the generic stories that are given to us with our curriculum because they cannot see themselves in the literature and many ideas are foreign to them because of culture and social status. For example, we were learning about weather and seasons of which their stories cover weather in a few pictures. In order for them to explore weather, I read to them "Little Cloud" by Eric Carle and we took a week learning about different clouds, rain, and weather. I was able to present it in a way to integrate other content areas like art and science. They learned about paint blotting to create their own clouds and created "storms in a jar" and learned that scientist document what they observe or in other words they only write and draw what they see as opposed to art which is open to interpretation. Bringing in rich mentor books allows me to provide more meaningful learning experiences, expose my students to things they would not otherwise experience, and bring in books like Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts helps them to understand difficult concepts by using stories that have characters like themselves in them. I have added many titles no my own throughout this year and struggled to make the curriculum provided reading more accessible to my students. I struggle to fill our classroom's bookshelves with books that align with our new curriculum and look to you for help.
About my class
This book project is designed with the help of recommended trade books and books I have research myself for my students to find meaning and connections to the concepts that they are learning for English Language Arts which unfortunately our new curriculum does not provide.
My students struggle to understand and make connections with generic and boring literature. They do not connect to the generic stories that are given to us with our curriculum because they cannot see themselves in the literature and many ideas are foreign to them because of culture and social status. For example, we were learning about weather and seasons of which their stories cover weather in a few pictures. In order for them to explore weather, I read to them "Little Cloud" by Eric Carle and we took a week learning about different clouds, rain, and weather. I was able to present it in a way to integrate other content areas like art and science. They learned about paint blotting to create their own clouds and created "storms in a jar" and learned that scientist document what they observe or in other words they only write and draw what they see as opposed to art which is open to interpretation. Bringing in rich mentor books allows me to provide more meaningful learning experiences, expose my students to things they would not otherwise experience, and bring in books like Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts helps them to understand difficult concepts by using stories that have characters like themselves in them. I have added many titles no my own throughout this year and struggled to make the curriculum provided reading more accessible to my students. I struggle to fill our classroom's bookshelves with books that align with our new curriculum and look to you for help.